


the only things that i really like, are the sounds of a switchblade and a motorbike

by mysteriousacorn, oncewewerezombies



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Bullying, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Dreambubbles, Gen, Illustrations, It's Hard and Nobody Understands, Musicals, Toxic Friendships, Vulnerability, Vwizard Cronus, changing who you are for potential popularity and acceptance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:34:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27708412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysteriousacorn/pseuds/mysteriousacorn, https://archiveofourown.org/users/oncewewerezombies/pseuds/oncewewerezombies
Summary: Cronus finds a human artefact that is going to change his afterlife - a pirated copy of Grease.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 10
Collections: Dancestor Mini Bang 2020





	the only things that i really like, are the sounds of a switchblade and a motorbike

**Author's Note:**

> Art by the excellent [mysteriousacorn!](https://mysteriousacorn.tumblr.com/)

Being dead has been just as bad as being alive (you don’t know _why_ you expected anything different). Meenah blew you all apart with a bomb, and a twist of her wrist and a glittering smile and you've all just been here ever since. Lurking in the dreambubbles. Getting older without getting older (because you're _dead_ ), passing through time without really passing through it. Luckily it hasn't fucked you up as bad as you think it's fucked Megido up - your Aspect is Hope, not Time. And you're pretty fucked up as it is, since there's no more hope to be found with any of your friends.

You're all dead.

That's how it is.

You try to get people to like you more, you want to show them how good the books you're interested in _are_. Troll Harry Potter is a true hero's journey, something that any type of troll could read and relate to. You'd have thought that Meulin at least might have been interested, since she writes her own stories, but she couldn't even summon enough attention to read half a chapter. Or just listen to you talk about it. Instead she'd just started yell-screaming about how her friendfics were going and how she was pairing everyone up - everyone except you, apparently. Because she just couldn't think of who she'd want to put with you. Couldn’t think of _anybody_ in the whole round dozen of you.

Feeling bruised and humiliated from the whole experience (experiences), this time you decide to go deep into the dreambubbles and away from these trolls who really don't appreciate you. At least when you're by yourself, you don't actually have to _listen_ to them making fun of you. Things start getting weird, the further out you go.

You stop seeing trolls, so much. You’ve seen version upon version of you and all your dead friends (people you know and can’t get away from is probably more accurate). Spawned from points where you’d made different choices, had different paths to go down - you try not to think about that too hard, your Aspect is Hope, not Time. You’ll leave that kind of twisted shit to Damara, and good fucking luck to her with it. You don’t talk to any of the versions of you that you see - you’re pretty sure that you’re the original, the true version - but what if you’re not? In some corner of yourself, you’re not sure if you could take it, so you keep away from exchanging any sort of communication with them. Or getting any closer than a casual wave from a distance.

You’re not sure how far out you are from the bubbles you and the rest of your failed group hang out in, but you have been travelling for what feels like a long time. The artefacts and buildings aren’t like anything you’ve seen before. They’re not even like Alternia buildings. They’re weird, and they’re _new_. You haven’t seen anything new for a real long fucking time - it feels good, and you plunge deeper into these weird fucking buildings and start _really_ getting into looking through shit.

You smooth down your striped scarf, and make sure it’s hanging correctly, looped cosily around your throat and with one half of it over your shoulder and the other half hanging down in front. You’ve found a hive that you can actually get into, and maybe if you were still alive and this was the real world, you'd feel guilty about breaking in but no one really comes here anymore.  
It’s nothing. It’s a ghost, and so are you.

You enter cautiously, all the same. You’ve met more than one person in the bubbles who wasn’t so pleased about finding you in what remained in the memory of their hive. You don’t think some of them actually remembered that they’d died. And not everyone is pleased to see a visitor in their hive, even one as easy to get along with as you. People just _decide_ not to like you for some reason, and you’re really tired of dealing with it. All you want is some real friends, like the ones you read about in Troll Harry Potter. And maybe even a few kisses in a quadrant. 

This is one of the abandoned ones, so you relax and sigh before going to collapse onto the comfortslab that takes up a lot of the room. After a while, you start poking around at all the weird stuff they’ve got in here. It’s all so weird and boxy, and well. _Dead_. You’re used to biogrubtech, and this stuff is _really_ different. Thanks to the fact that whoever had owned this hive had left one of the rainbow-spinning discs in the machine, and that ‘play’ seems to be the same forward facing triangle for both of you, you manage to find out how to get things playing so you can watch the movies trapped on the discs. You’re not great at tech, but you’re pleased that you’ve managed to figure this one out.

None of the movies are like anything you’ve ever seen before. You’re glued to the screen like you had been the first time you’d seen Troll Harry Potter Learns that He is A Wizard and Goes On Many Adventures Over the Course of his First Year at Trollwarts With His Two Best Friends, etc. It’s _amazing_. The way they think about romance is completely different, and they laugh and do things differently, and they _love_ so deeply, so sincerely - you want it. You want to be them, you want that world so fucking badly you could taste it.

It’s almost the last disc that you put in, that changes everything about your entire afterlife. Everything about what you want to be, everything you want to emulate. You drink it in, from the opening song to the very last scrap of music. You wallow in cultural cliches you don’t understand, and your pusher aches as all the twined love stories dance their way through complications and misunderstandings, until everyone’s _together_ , and they have their happy endings.

You want to be like them. You want to be like _Danny_ , you want to be that cool. You want to be in _love_ , you want to be loved, you want someone to look at you the way Sandy looks at Danny, the way Kenicke looks at Rizo. You want it so bad it hurts, like a bruise on the inside where no one else can see. It hurts like nothing else, but you can’t give it up.

You play the disc again. And again, and again and again, until every word, every moment of action is engraved on your thinkpan and you couldn’t forget it if you tried. You learn the songs, you get the way their music moves and fuck, it’s so _good_. It’s satisfying, like nothing you ever heard on Beforus was. When there’s a chance to lose something, that’s when people really feel something and humans? Humans they fucking knew what it meant to _risk_ everything for love.

You wish you were human, instead of a troll. 

They just seem better. And besides, you’re _sick_ of trolls, you’re sick of being ignored and pushed aside and made fun of. Maybe, if you’d had a chance to be human, you would have had the chance to have a real sweetheart. Maybe you would have had real _friends_ (once you would have thought like Troll Harry Potter with his two bosom buddies, but now you think - _what if you could have been one of the T-Birds_ ). 

Stretching finally and getting up, you catch a glimpse of yourself with all your wizardy finery clinging around your body in a mirror and frown. Yeah, that ain’t gonna work at _all_ , not for the new look you know you deserve. You’re growing up and leaving grubby things behind, you know just what you need.

It takes some looking and some careful artistry, but eventually you’re pulling a white shirt over your head and you’re admiring yourself in a mirror from horntip to toe. You’d stitch your sign onto it in the right purple, your cosplay history coming into use once more. Your legs are encased in tight blue denim jeans, cuffs rolled up to show white socks over your ankles, feet in low-slung black shoes. You preen, and play with your hair until you’ve got the bit of a quiff that you can manage right, settling into a rough pompadour. You hadn’t grown your hair long enough to _really_ get the look, but you’re pretty fucking close.

You look good.

You look _hot_ , you think smugly to yourself as you champ your fangs around the cigarette you’d found, unlit and white dangling from the corner of your smirking grin as you get a real full look at the new you.

You bet when you go back, everyone is going to be real fucking surprised by the new Cronus Ampora.

(And you don’t think, you don’t, how you hope they like this one better.)


End file.
